Rachel Maddow Explains the Counter-Intuitive Legacy of Westboro

Fred Phelps and company set out to make the world hate LGBT people but achieved the opposite.

BY Lucas Grindley

March 23 2014 11:20 AM ET

The true legacy of Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church might have been to serve as "an American inspiration," argued Rachel Maddow on her show Friday.

"Who cares, right? Who cares?" she said of Phelps's death and what now happens to Westboro, which she calls a cult. "But there is something important, I think, and worth noting I think now that it's founder has died."

Maddow made the case that in trying so desperately to pressure the right-wing into hating LGBT people all the more, the backlash that Westboro sparked was a unifying element against their beliefs.